The Concept of Non-Photography

The Concept of Non-Photography

François Laruelle

Urbanomic/Sequence
April 2011; Second edition 2012
Bilingual (English/French) edition
English Translation by Robin Mackay
Paperback 115x175mm, 286pp.
ISBN 978-0-9832169-1-9

If philosophy has always understood itself and its World according to the model of the photograph, then how can there be a "philosophy of photography" that is not viciously self-reflexive? By thinking the photograph "non-philosophically", Laruelle discovers an essence of photography that precedes its historical, technological and aesthetic conditions. Challenging the customary assumptions made by any "theory of photography" that leaves its own "onto-photo-logical" conditions uninterrogated, and utilizing the concept of a "generalized fractality" to interrogate artistic creation, The Concept of Non-Photography exposes a rigorous new thinking of the photograph in its relation to philosophy, science and art.

François Laruelle (1937–2024) was Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris X: Nanterre and author of more than twenty-five books, including Biography of the Ordinary Man, Theory of Strangers, Principles of Non-Philosophy, Future Christ, Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy, Anti-Badiou, and Non-Standard Philosophy. He developed the concept of 'non-philosophy' and until his death, directed the Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, dedicated to furthering its cause.

Contents
Preface

What is Seen in a Photo?
  The Philosopher as Self-Portrait of the Photographer; Towards an Abstract or Non-Figurative Theory of
  Photography; The Photographic Stance and Vision-force; Universal Photographic Fiction

A Science of Photography
  The Continent of Flat Thoughts; A Science of Photography; What Can a Photo Do?; The Identity-Photo;
  The Spontaneous Philosophy of Photography; The Photographic Mode of Existence; The Being-Photo
  of the Photo; Photographic Realism; Problems of Method: Art and Art Theory. Invention and Discovery;
  On the Photo as Visual Algorithm; On Photography as Generalised Fractality; On the Spontaneous
  Philosophy of Artists and its Theoretical Use; The Photographic Stance and its Technological Conditions
  of Insertion into the World; Being-in-photo and the Automaticity of Thought: the Essence of Photographic
  Manifestation; The Power-of-Semblance and the Effect of Resemblance; A Priori Photographic Intuition

A Philosophy of Creation
  The Grain of the Walls; Ethic of the American Creator as Fractal Artist; The Fractal Self and its Signature:
  A New Alchemical Synthesis;The Concept of 'Irregularity-force'; The Fractal Play of the World. Synthesis
  of Modern and Postmodern; Towards a Non-Philosophical Aesthetics

 

 

The Concept of Non-Photography review
Catherine Kron for DIS Magazine
July 10, 2011

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François Laruelle review
The Times Literary Supplement
April 1, 2011

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François Laruelle, The Concept of Non-Photography
Book launch, symposium and lecture
Tuesday, April 5 – Thursday, April 7, 2011
Miguel Abreu Gallery
36 Orchard Street, New York, NY    

PRESS RELEASE

 
Axiomatic heresy
By Ray Brassier

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François Laruelle, or The Secret
Lecture by Alexander Galloway
Public School NYC, October 2010

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